


Strange Hotel

by 12XU



Category: Maurice (1987), Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: Canon Fill, Canon Gay Relationship, Class Differences, Class-Based Erotics, Control, E. M. Forster, LGBTQ Themes, Longing, Love, M/M, Missing Scene, Power Dynamics, Romance, Sexual Tension, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2017-12-16 16:52:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/864345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/12XU/pseuds/12XU
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>**Chapter 3 now posted.**</b>
</p><p> </p><p>‘Stop with me ... Sleep the night with me. I know a place’ (<i>Maurice</i>, Chapter 43).  </p><p>An ongoing work in progress exploring Maurice and Alec’s complex, turbulent night together at a London hotel following their crisis at the British Museum, 25–26 August 1913, Bloomsbury, London WC1. Chapters posted to date can be read as standalones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tuesday, Rain

**  
1.**

There were any of number of hotels like it on Gower Street, but Alec headed for this one. He and Maurice were arm in arm now under the umbrella, but in the late-afternoon rain nobody saw; and the shy, secret squeeze they exchanged, muscle against muscle, was felt by them alone.

They didn’t separate until they were almost at the front steps. Inside, everything but the stair-carpet seemed patinated, sepia or brown, as if the whole place had been varnished or polished against splashes, stains and rough use.

> ‘Front of hotel or annexe, sir?’ asked the man on reception.
> 
> ‘Annexe, please,’ Alec pitched in – faster than Maurice could think, and fixing the man with a look Maurice noted but could not read.

The receptionist turned to Maurice.

> ‘You are aware, sir, that the annexe has no single rooms, only twin?’
> 
> ‘Twin is fine.’
> 
> ‘And you are aware, sir, of our terms? Payment now, and, if you prefer, the key may be returned via the box’ – he gestured towards yet more brown varnish – ‘in the morning. In view of this we require, for the annexe rooms, a non-returnable deposit as insurance against any _un_ -reasonable mess or damage’ – this with a curious inflection on the ‘ _un_ ’. ‘For a good breakfast we recommend Gino’s on Store Street, and on Store Street you will also find night provisions, including the services of a night barber or chemist if required. _Finally_ , sirs, I must respectfully remind you both – and I am sure you will understand – that we keep an orderly house here.’
> 
> ‘Of course,’ said Maurice, barely focusing on the apparently disjointed list of conditions and information. And he handed over the cash and received the key. 

\-----

**2.**

They kept their distance as they climbed the first straight flight of stairs. A heavy, unglazed door on the first half-landing signed ‘annexe’ opened onto a passage. In contrast with its narrow Georgian street front, the hotel now revealed unsuspected interior depths stretching towards the mews behind. Maurice had worried fleetingly about privacy and thin walls, but everything seemed muffled: carpeted or panelled. And, in truth, now that he and Alec were here – _together_ , in fragile triumph over their earlier peril – such quotidian concerns were fading fast from his mind. He felt suddenly grateful that during their bitter argument as they paced the wet streets he had bought Alec and himself a hot pie and tea from one of the vans behind the museum. Alec had looked so cold and hungry, and Maurice had hoped the food might warm them both up and calm the boy down. Well, that had only half succeeded. And the last thing either of them wanted now was to venture back out to find ‘provisions’, or be anywhere other than alone together.

There were no other guests in evidence. Half way along the passage, Alec turned back to look at Maurice and beamed him an adorable smile, and Maurice smiled back.

> ‘What was that about the barber or chemist?’ Maurice asked.
> 
> ‘Never you mind!’ Alec’s grin turned cheeky, and a penny – or rather, a stack of them – dropped that made Maurice realise he should not pursue this. Certainly not in the corridor.

The passage ended in another dark heavy door, which opened onto an odd small lobby. To their left, a panelled door that proved to be locked. To the right, dimly lit and less immediately obvious, the tight entrance to an enclosed spiral stairwell. In the past life he could feel slipping away from him like quicksand, Maurice would scarcely have seen it: the maids’ stairs, surely. But Alec had darted towards the spiral, and now he turned, and his hand caught Maurice’s and began to lead him upwards.

The corkscrew grew darker as they climbed, and Maurice soon lost focus on everything but the beat of his own heart, the closeness of Alec’s body, and a defenceless, intensifying awareness of his own after so many painful days and nights apart. Clumsy with anticipation, he stumbled – and Alec caught him, held him by the elbows, and pulled him close, as if this had been meant to happen.

For a second or so they froze in the cramped space, barely breathing, gauging how far they were from the floors below and above – whether they were really alone, whether they might be heard. Alec had fully expected to hold off from this until they reached their room. But the shadowy spiral felt like a private world where there was nothing but him and Maurice, and he was hit hard by an onslaught of feelings: tenderness and contrition, nerves of resentment and hurt that might flare up yet if mishandled, and near on two weeks of raw desire.

In silence their arms and hands found each other, and suddenly they were trembling against each other, two powerful bodies weak with pent-up want. Maurice knew they could not risk this. Not here … not for long, or … But their lips had touched. Rough fingers caressed up into his hair at the nape of his neck, traced the line of his jaw, found the tenderest part of his throat. And now they were kissing – as quietly as they could – and it felt so sweet he wanted Alec never to stop. And even the tiniest kisses were unlocking all the deeper feelings between them – aching, natural, profoundly carnal – that the law forbade them even in private. But their bodies cared nothing for the law and were rediscovering each other regardless: hips tilting, hungry for contact; rubbing and provoking, teasing and doing more than tease. They tried to stay calm and quiet, but the air between them was already thick with arousal. It became impossible to choke back every gasp and sigh.

Alec’s stiffening cock caught Maurice’s in a particular way, and the two of them failed to suppress a loud, near-simultaneous, moan. Reacting fast, Alec clamped his hand across Maurice’s mouth. They tried to slow their breath – Maurice almost gagging against Alec’s palm – and willed their pounding blood and pulsing bodies to calm down – at least enough to get to their room in a state that would not be arrestable for public indecency. In the intimate shadow, Alec caught Maurice’s eye and half-giggled. There was something absurd about the state of them both: so overexcited for each other already, struggling not to frot against each other like animals on heat. But, in the tight, dark stairwell, every sensation felt unbearably amplified, and the friction and tightening pressure of fabric against flesh, their trapped cocks swelling and throbbing so hard for each other inside too many clothes, only made the exquisite frustration worse. Even Alec’s hand muffling Maurice’s mouth felt like an erotic provocation, to be caressed in hard, wet circles with the tip of his tongue.

Oh god, neither of them had experienced quite this before: to be so in love and so explosively turned on by each other in an almost public place. There was no escaping it this close together, and Alec was on the brink of taking a greater, stupid risk. He couldn’t take this much longer: couldn’t stand that they weren’t already naked together – or naked enough – where he could throw Maurice on the bed – or not even bother with that – and take him and give to him, every single way his inflamed mind and body had already rehearsed, until they could both take no more. And not patient and gentle like their first time. It had been too long, and his resentful, lovesick body had lost all patience. 

> ‘Twelve fucking days.’ The words were breathed almost silently into Maurice’s ear, half threat, half caress.
> 
> ‘Dreamed of you every damned night,’ Maurice choked against Alec’s hand.

The constraint was making Maurice gag. He pulled Alec’s hand away from his mouth and did something very unwise: he pressed it where his erection strained hard against his City trousers, leaving Alec in no doubt what those waking dreams had been like, as if the touch alone could tell all about their painful, consuming nights spent apart. He heard Alec gasp sharply, as if he’d ached for this as acutely as Maurice had, and felt Alec’s fingers delicately tracing every beautiful, sculptural detail of his hardness through the infernal layers of fabric.

Maurice could feel that Alec was being careful – but oh god, he’d gone half crazy from craving Alec’s touch on him again, even as he professed disgust, sought a cure, fled in terror from the servant who had awakened this fathomless sexual hunger in him. Half crazy from the confused nights of fighting _not_ to want this, then failing, capitulating. All the nights Maurice’s lone body had burned for Alec, refusing to forget, inflamed by visions and sensations no science, threat or hypnotist could banish. The guilt-filled nights of struggling to calm his senses enough to get some sleep. Nights haunted by the myriad sensations of Alec all over him, the scent and taste of his body, his cock in Maurice’s mouth, the exquisite torment as his wet mouth took Maurice. Nights of Maurice replaying all this in his mind until, wracked with self-loathing, he came, catching the violent spasms of seed in a handkerchief. On some of those nights Maurice had even wanked off, ashamed but desperately aroused, to involuntary thoughts of Alec’s letters. In his lust and confusion, he barely understood whether his body was mistaking them (so he told himself) for love letters, or perversely excited by the threat of blackmail.

How had every one of those nights felt so wretched, so wrong, when Alec’s touch now – a gentle hand cupping his balls, one finger testing the pulse of a cock-vein that throbbed hard as lead – felt so right?

> ‘Oh my love. Just wait till I have you in that room.’ Alec’s throat was hoarse with desire.

Almost as if hypnotised, his hand slipped back around Maurice’s waist and dropped down to appreciate the taut curve of his arse. Then, entirely without warning, Maurice felt a much deeper, intimate caress that made him cry out.

> ‘ _Christ. Don’t._ We can’t stay here.’

Maurice’s whole body had jolted. The unexpected, taboo touch – Alec’s fingers stroking deep into his crack through the trousers and against the sensitive rosebud of his anus – was so shockingly pleasurable that he was relieved to find he hadn’t spurted inside his pants. It had been a near thing.

> ‘Too right we can’t.’ _No need to ask if you liked that_ , Alec thought, grinning delightedly in the dark.

Making a final heroic effort to control themselves, the lovers pulled apart, exchanged a conspiratorial smile, adjusted their clothes, and prepared to emerge as insouciantly as they could manage from the stairwell to find their room and get safely inside.

Alec cupped Maurice’s face tenderly between his hands. 

> ‘You’re so flushed,’ he whispered, enchanted by the heat in Maurice’s cheeks, remembering all over again how beautiful he was when arousal darkened the innocence of his grey-blue eyes.
> 
> ‘So are you,’ Maurice whispered back, his fingers caressing the heat of Alec’s cheek and neck in return, adoring the dark gleam in his eyes, failing to subdue thoughts of the rest of him hot and slick with passion.

Alec looked up to the blur of light at the top of the stairs. Above, footsteps creaked, and a shadow passed along the passage. They froze, but then, to their relief, the sound of a heavy door closing, then silence.

> ‘Onwards and upwards, then. Ready?’
> 
> ‘You first – we should keep some distance. Here, take the key.’

Maurice pressed it into Alec’s hand. And in the half-dark he smiled again, as if he meant something by the gesture.

> ‘What if I can’t trust you to follow?’ Alec meant it as a joke, but, once spoken, the words tasted bitter.

In silent reply, Maurice reached out his hand. Alec took it and gently tugged him up the last few stairs a step or two behind him, until visibility loomed.  

> ‘Come!’

**\------**

**3.**

Outside a room some way along the passage towards the end, Alec stood poised, key in hand.

> ‘Let me in, then?’ Maurice asked softly.

And he dared, fleetingly, to meet Alec’s eyes, knowing that this moment was important: wanting to read his lover, wanting Alec to know his love and understand his apology, hoping to heal all the mistrust that had passed between them. His gaze was returned, and somehow – secretly, masked by his coat – he felt Alec’s hand touch and squeeze his.

Unexpectedly, someone else materialised on the corridor. They instantly unlocked eyes and repositioned themselves to pass for anything but what they were: an improbable pair of commercial travellers, maybe; anything but lovers. The passer-by looked at them with a wistful, queer expression, somewhere between reminiscence, envy and regret – then, with a tiny smile, continued to his room.

> ‘What a strange fellow’, Maurice murmured – genuinely startled, even shocked, more than he cared to admit.

The man was bony-cheeked and at least fifty, but something of a dandy: carefully styled and obviously dyed black hair, a small green carnation head in his buttonhole, and he appeared to be wearing rouge. Maurice could not connect this creature with themselves, yet something in the encounter made him think immediately of Risley.

> ‘Par for the course, place like this,’ Alec whispered.

It was the most he could say, really, to Maurice. The truth was that this was Alec’s first time up the spiral-stairs annexe, but not his first at this hotel. What surprised Maurice did not surprise Alec – but his sympathy for the old queen was tempered by relief that Maurice was there with him. Alec smiled appreciatively at his lover.

> ‘Lucky we’ve each other, eh?’

With no one to observe them, their eyes had locked again now.

> ‘Sweeter than words can say,’ Maurice whispered – and he felt his hand squeezed again as Alec turned the key.
> 
>  

 

**_Chapter 1 ends_**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘I’m afraid it isn’t right in itself, and couldn’t be after so many years, but my wanting to do it is important, and I’m sure it is wanted, and may – despite the jar in tone – strengthen the stuff on either side of it … As it is, A[lec] has full license to misbehave, and throw his attractive weight about, and M[aurice] to be grand, and I should like to think that they take it.’  
> – E. M. Forster in a letter to Christopher Isherwood, 18 January 1952. Quoted by Philip Gardner, Editor’s Introduction to the Abinger Edition of _Maurice_ , 1999, p.xli.
> 
> As with my earlier stories, this one mashes aspects of film and book canon with other influences, from Forster’s unpublished early drafts of _Maurice_ to biographical reading, social-history imaginings, the topography of Bloomsbury, and (lurking in the background) the area’s Victorian and Edwardian artistic, literary and queer histories.
> 
> My dateline is drawn from sweet_fallacy’s (2010) ‘Time-line of Maurice: book-verse’ (http://mr-edna-may.livejournal.com/83189.html)


	2. Dusk: Give Over Talking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Too grand, eh? Thought you could keep me hanging on so?’ 
> 
> In which Alec throws his attractive weight about.

**1.**

> ‘Maurice —’

The door was latched and bolted. Their hats and outer clothes lay folded in redundant respectability across a narrow bed they would never use. Alec’s wet jacket draped across the back of a chair to dry. Their boots and socks discarded less neatly.

> ‘ _Maurice —_ ’

Alec gulped – trying again, because he doubted Maurice had any idea about the practicalities of an establishment of this kind, and these had to be explained, however discreetly. Details about water and washing and toilets and towels, before their passion for each other boiled right over into naked abandon.

But Maurice was already making that fiendishly difficult.

Alec was still on his feet – just – but Maurice had him pinned to a niche of bare wall next to the fireplace and was working on him with a startling – disquieting – new confidence. Alec’s striped shirt hung loose and unbuttoned; his stiff high collar – still attached by one stud – jammed into the back of his neck as the force of Maurice’s kisses rammed him again and again against the wall. His undershirt had been pushed up to expose the firm, muscled warmth of his abdomen and chest, his necktie swayed low and slack across bare flesh, and Maurice’s hands were caressing him everywhere they could reach.

Maurice’s intentions were reverent, but the relief and joy of being able to touch Alec after so long excited him indecently fast. In his confused dreams he had never stopped wanting this, but no dream could equal the human reality: Alec twisting and gasping under his desperate kisses and eager hands; the luminous warmth of his skin, half-lit by the rainy window; the thrill and threat of the muscle beneath; the hard body and soft sighs – all his, this one night, to do with as he wished. Maurice’s heart pounded dry in his mouth and down deep inside his belly as he rediscovered the sensual triggers Alec’s responses had taught him back at Pendersleigh: trailing a finger along the sensitive pout of Alec’s lip; rewarded by the rough provocation of his tongue, sucking him in hard and deep; then pulling out to wet-tease Alec’s nipples until Alec tensed against him, emitting a deep moan that quaked through them both.

Alec ached for more – and christ, he had no qualms about how much more – but to find that he was the one being made love to like this disconcerted him. After Maurice’s terrible shyness and inexperience their first time together, Alec had come to the hotel fully expecting that tonight he would be in charge. Indeed, with motives as volatile as his emotions, he had come to London prepared for contingencies other than blackmail.

> ‘Maurice —’ he gasped a third time.

Maurice’s free hand had reached Alec’s fly – but, trembling terribly, he could do no more than fumble ineptly with the buttons. Alec’s suit – his hideous blue going-away suit for the Argentine – was, Maurice now had cause to realise, very meanly cut. The tailor – a contact of Fred Scudder’s, paid for by Fred Scudder – had barely calculated for sexual arousal, let alone Alec in his current state of swollen excitement, and Maurice could feel that his lover’s erection was testing the fly to its limits. The thought – still more than the touch – of Alec, throbbing and deliciously hard, trapped inside the painfully tightened fabric, was maddeningly erotic. In his conscience, Maurice knew that the vile suit must have been a significant expense for Alec or his family, probably the only suit he owned. But in his deeper desires he yearned to do things – to torment Alec through the fabric until he leaked a betraying stain, to tear the fly apart and make him come, messily and hard – that would destroy the trousers so badly that Alec would be unable to leave: not leave the hotel, nor leave England.

> ‘Maurice! _Stop!_ _Listen._ _Please_.’

Maurice finally did as he was told.

> ‘Just a few things you might want to know.’

Maurice looked blank, breathing hard.

> ‘You’ve not stayed somewhere like this before, right?’
> 
> ‘I suppose not. And—?’
> 
> ‘Well – there’s no bell, no room service.’ Alec’s mouth kinked at the irony. ‘So – what I mean is – we might want to take care of things now, before we get down to…’ – he gave Maurice a sweeter, cheekier grin and caught his eye, then looked down, suddenly bashful – ‘…you know.’ 
> 
> ‘You mean things like where’s the bathroom?’
> 
> ‘Correct. And your thoughts on how we plan to get there, sir, with no pyjamas or robe.’
> 
> ‘There’s my coat.’
> 
> ‘And checking there’s water for the washstand. And soap and towels.’

Maurice continued to look blank, as if this was someone else’s job. Alec shifted on reflex, but he could barely move his legs without wincing.

> ‘Maurice, could you? If you wouldn’t mind, please.’ 

Maurice looked briefly startled, but then did as ordered. The only two towels were rough and small, and the jug of water already on the washstand was predictably cold. But beyond that, hidden behind a screen in an odd niche near the door, the room held a surprise.

> ‘Good lord – a commode.’ 

Alec chuckled, then winced again.

> ‘That’s a novelty. They know who their customers are, right enough.’
> 
> ‘Horrible towels, though.’
> 
> ‘Are they? I wouldn’t rightly know.’
> 
> ‘And would hot water be nice?’
> 
> ‘You’ll be lucky to get “nice” here.’
> 
> ‘Shall I investigate?’
> 
> ‘Very kind of you, sir.’

Maurice understood the score now. Alec would call him ‘sir’ only when tacitly ordering him or taking the piss.

With Maurice despatched out of the room, Alec’s breathing eased a little. It was the only way he was going to get comfortable without embarrassment. Carefully, he unbuttoned and shed the troublesome trousers and soothed his sore, overexcited prick with a thorough cold wash. He raided his wet jacket for the ‘night provisions’ he had brought and put them somewhere discreet, combed his fingers through his hair as best he could to free it from the alien, controlling slick of brilliantine – which he hated – washed the residue from his hands, set aside two glasses of clean water for drinking, adjusted the lighting, and arranged himself for Maurice’s return.

**\-----**

**2.**

Something clattered, the key turned in the door, and Maurice edged in, with an enamel jug of hot water and some extra towels and flannels he’d succeeded in finding. The bathroom for their floor and a small, basic kitchen were actually very close. The towels were scratchy and worn, but Maurice had just achieved the small victories of navigating the contents of a linen cupboard and lighting a gas hob for the first time in his life. He headed straight to the washstand with the hot jug before he turned back and saw Alec. One set of curtains remained slightly open to a silent rear mews and the wet, sticky dusk. The lamps Alec had lit cast warm pools in the shadowy room, and the vision of him in the low light took Maurice’s breath away.

> _‘Alec —’_

Alec was lounged – exuding more confidence than he felt – in a small leather armchair by the unlit hearth. His dark curls and striped shirt hung loose – but his thicker undershirt had been tossed across the foot of the bed, and inside and below the casually rebuttoned shirt he was entirely naked. One leg stretched forward, toes flexing against the hearth-rug; the knee on the hearth side was hitched up slightly; his hipbone could be glimpsed as he flexed. Although his excitement had eased while Maurice was out of the room, the contours of his half-softened cock were still prominent, half-veiled, half-framed by the shirt-tails. The pose wasn’t crude – but nor, in the half-light, did it do anything to mute his devastating beauty.

> ‘ _So beautiful_.’ The words caught in Maurice’s throat.
> 
> ‘Nowhere near so as you.’

Alec stretched out his hand; their fingers touched and a bolt of desire shot through Maurice. His first urge was to kneel before Alec and worship him in the most profane way possible. But Alec had chosen his seat with other priorities.

 _So fucking beautiful_ , he thought, looking up at Maurice, his dark gaze soft and inflamed all at once. _But far too much still dressed_.

Alec held the gaze, observing Maurice’s hypnotised response as his eyes slowly explored Alec’s body and face in return. For a dozen or so heartbeats that felt like forever they both remained almost motionless, rapt with desire, as if they could possess each other perfectly just by looking. Alec sensed Maurice tensing, as if he was about to break their distance.

> ‘Stop. Just as you are.’

Alec felt a nervous thrill in his belly at the thought of what he was about to ask. Then he barely whispered it:

> ‘Undress for me.’

Maurice blushed red, suddenly hesitant and gauche and shy. Alec watched as the heat spread adorably down from his cheeks to his neck.

> ‘For me,’ he whispered, squeezing Maurice’s hand in encouragement.

Maurice’s shyness enchanted him, but his tender feelings were entangled with tougher, urgently carnal, even cynical emotions. _Whether you paid or not, you’re here for my pleasure now – ‘Sir’_ , he thought. _Best if you understand that right now._

Alec continued to sit observantly, noting with pleasure how Maurice’s eyes had darkened at his demand. This new-found power – to violate his lover’s shyness, to ignite desire in Maurice that he could not physically conceal; power that found its vindication in Alec’s lingering, deep and bitter, feelings of class resentment and humiliation – thrilled him more deeply than he cared to admit.

Still blushing, and avoiding Alec’s eyes, Maurice fumbled awkwardly with the knot of his tie, loosening but not quite removing it. Slowly, his fingers trembling not only with shyness, he began to undo his shirt. The first buttonhole seemed infernally stiff. But as he approached the second, then the third, he found he was pausing between each, meeting Alec’s eyes again, holding his gaze, seeking his responses. Somewhere in his strange mix of timidity and excitement he found he was playing Alec at his own game, drawing out the anticipation and taking pleasure in it, undressing with a hypnotic slowness that heightened all his own senses: watching as Alec’s face turned as hot as his own, sensing how hard his lover’s blood must be thumping, catching the scent of his arousal. Time felt stretched to unbearable limits, tantalising them both till they could barely endure it. Alec’s breathing had become obvious; his lips parted, slack and wet; and his cock … he was stiff as hell again now, his erection hitching up and up in its own blatant, almost telepathetic, response to his lover.

Bare-chested now, Maurice’s fingers paused over the buttons of his own fly, his gaze burning into Alec’s. They were both shaking all over, intensely excited by this bloody-minded game of discovering what they could do to each other without touching. Alec still lounged in the chair, misleadingly passive, but flaunting all the physical evidence of his pleasure in watching. The thought of taking the swollen head of Alec’s cock between his lips, being able to taste him after so long, licking away the salty beads he could see already forming, working him hard with his mouth and tongue, drove Maurice almost crazy. Alec’s shirt hung loose and redundant – Maurice had no idea when he had undone it – frontally exposing his body, and casually he began to touch where Maurice longed to but could not, circling a roughened thumb around his own nipple, biting his lip and giving Maurice a little smile as that stiffened too.

Dazed with lust, Maurice ripped open his trouser button, then the next and the next, stumbled out of them as they dropped to the floor. Impatiently, he thrust his long pants down to follow. His cock felt huge, and he could feel Alec’s eyes on him there, staring openly, breath quickening at the sheer beauty of his erection. At last, his body offered itself naked to Alec: tall and athletic, strong as a god, exquisitely muscled. Alec could hold off no longer. He leapt from the chair and flung himself at Maurice, pulling him to him by the hair and waist so that their naked, desperate bodies were finally entwined. His lips found Maurice’s neck, then his mouth, and he began to devour him with kisses, rough and sweet and aching with want, until Maurice instinctively found his tongue in return.

The kisses felt like their whole world, and they drowned themselves deep in each other: fused together, stumbling backwards together the step or two it took to hit the second bed by the window. Maurice dropped at an angle onto the counterpane, head landing half on a pillow and half on thin air, and pulled Alec down close, so close, on top of him, his nakedness smelling of summer rain and sex, the open shirt billowing above him like a sail. Alec rolled aside briefly to discard the shirt onto the other bed, then back to his lover.

**\-----**

**3.**

Half-glowing, half-shadowed in the lamplight, Alec loomed over Maurice, working on him like some dark angel of pleasure. His mouth brushed and licked and sucked the tender hollow of Maurice’s throat, then hard and passionate all over his chest; one hand tracing the line of Maurice’s hip, the other roughing his nipples just as he had teased his own – until Maurice was incapable of anything but holding Alec to anchor him close, moaning for him and whispering his name, over and over, incoherent with love and need as the long-deferred pleasure coursed almost painfully through him. His fingers raked deep into Alec’s dark curls, not caring if it hurt; the hot urgent mouth and tongue travelled lower and lower until they reached his belly. Maurice felt his knees being bent up for him; strong hands pressed his thighs apart, and Alec knelt between them, more demanding than worshipful. His fingers worked up and down Maurice’s rigid shaft, attuned to every throb; his body moved in such a way that Maurice’s sensitive glans brushed against his nakedness: the smooth muscle, his hard nipples, his softer belly. The desired body became an instrument of joy and torment, as if Alec understood exactly how Maurice had dreamed of him: stroking tantalisingly against him skin on skin until Maurice felt the contact – given, withheld – might drive him mad. The unbearable pleasure suddenly turned wet: Maurice’s cock was in Alec’s mouth, flooded with saliva, caressed by sweet lips and hard suction. His head dropped back, consumed by sensation, almost faint from the play of denial and intensification. Distantly, he could feel his own hips jerking, and felt a brief reflex of futile shame to realise how crudely, how desperately, he was fucking Alec’s mouth, thrusting against the resistance of his tongue.

Maurice scarcely noticed that Alec had not – yet – lost control, nor the detail of what Alec was doing, elsewhere, to his body. The hand that had worked Maurice’s shaft was caressing further back, past his balls, and his fingers – slicked, slippery – were starting to give Maurice another pleasure, the kind that had shocked but acutely excited him on the stairs. Far too aroused to think past a fuzzy assumption that Alec would keep on sucking him to orgasm, Maurice barely realised that one of Alec’s fingers was circling teasingly into the sensitive pink knot of his anus, nor how willingly he was opening up to him.

Abruptly, Alec pulled his mouth off Maurice’s cock and squeezed him hard close to the balls, his right-hand fingers forming a firm ring. It was only then that Maurice understood that Alec’s left middle finger had already penetrated him and was caressing experimentally in and out. It felt incredible – but on top of Maurice’s already extreme, unrelieved, arousal, it also felt too intense.

Maurice tried to muster speech, but entirely failed.

> ‘How’s that feel?’

Alec paused to meet his eyes, then proceeded to fuck his finger more boldly in and out: venturing deeper, circling and bending, knowing full well the spot he was working towards and his intended effect.

> ‘ _Christ_  — _Oh_ — oh _god_.’
> 
> ‘Oh, I’ve hardly started.’

Alec beamed a sweet, cheeky smile, but his grip on the base of Maurice’s erection tightened like a vice.

> ‘Steady, boy – you’ve a way to go yet. _Sir_.’

The ‘ _sir_ ’ was a blatant, goading, afterthought. Maurice could feel his cock leaping and pulsing even more insistently against Alec’s almost painful grip. He was appalled to realise how over-excited he was by the way Alec was taking charge and giving orders. Alec grinned, delighted by the same discovery.

> ‘ _Control yourself_.’

Another squeeze on his already rock-hard cock. The admonition made Maurice throb even harder. His balls felt tight and his thighs were shaking.

> ‘You … know damned well … I can’t.’ He could only get the words out in ragged gasps.
> 
> ‘We’ll see about that. _Sir_.’ Was it possible that Alec had just clamped him even tighter? ‘Too grand, eh? Thought you could keep me hanging on so? All those nights, without consequences?’

Alec’s eyes had gone very dark. He looked hard at Maurice, openly taking pleasure in his power to discomfit his lover and manipulate his arousal all at once. No doubt about it, putting Maurice in his place felt intoxicatingly good – more dizzying still to experience such power over a gentleman; sweetest of all when the gentleman was so beautiful, so thrillingly pliant, and when Alec was so desperately in love with him. But Alec was made of cussedness, not cruelty. His finger momentarily withdrew, and he loosened his punishing grip so that he could slide tenderly up Maurice’s body to kiss him sweetly on the mouth.

> ‘Do as you’re told and you’ll be fine.’

The kiss was meant to reassure, but the taste of his own salty, musky excitement on Alec’s mouth added almost intolerably to Maurice’s frustration.

> ‘And if I don’t?’
> 
> ‘Then I’ll get flaming mad at you.’

Alec reached for something on the night-stand, and Maurice once again felt his lover’s fingers, slightly calloused but well-oiled, caressing deep into his arse-crack. A finger re-entered him, played teasingly again with his sensitive entrance until he dilated for more – then a second finger. He could feel himself opening up so readily for Alec, craving more sensation, for Alec to go deeper, to be filled by him more and more. And the more his body responded, the more he twitched and throbbed with new, taboo thoughts of what more he might be able to take. Thoughts of being filled tight by Alec; imagining how it would feel to take the beautiful cock he had fantasised about for the past twelve nights.

Maurice squirmed and moaned under Alec’s ministrations and felt a further stab of shame. Would Alec think less of him for being so easy? But Alec was breathing hard himself now, plainly excited by the anal play, his own desire becoming acute and unconcealed, his cock dark, swollen and rigid again at the promise of what he hoped would follow. The two fingers started to fuck Maurice faster and deeper. They twisted and spread and kinked inside him until he let out a sudden gasp, hit by an intense spasm of strange pleasure.

> ‘ _Fuck_.’
> 
> ‘Oh I will, don’t you worry. Like that?’
> 
> Alec continued, catching Maurice’s pleasure spot again, stroking and circling carefully, unlocking sensations of an intensity Maurice could barely handle, along with more diffuse, mysterious feelings that seemed to permeate his whole body. It was as if Alec was caressing his entire being from the inside out
> 
> ‘ _Ohhhhh_ — christ — oh Alec — _please_.’
> 
> ‘“ _Please_ ”?’

Alec paused, but his heaving breath told a truer story than his teasing voice. They were both hot and flushed now; his erection pressed deliciously heavy against Maurice’s hip and belly. He had long stopped ordering Maurice to control himself.

> ‘Please – _more_. I mean – _you_.’
> 
> ‘All of me?’
> 
> ‘Please. Inside me.’

_Oh my love_ , Alec thought, overwhelmed. _My sweet love_.

> ‘ _Maurice_ … Maurice … Oh my boy.’

He reached again for the night-table.

> ‘Keep your legs wide,’ he whispered. ‘But hold your thighs back – roll right back – like that. Breathe deep. Relax.’

And, in place of his lover’s oiled fingers, Maurice felt something else. The roundness of Alec’s cock nuzzling him, then a hard, insistent pressure that felt unrelenting, Alec pushing but only gradually gaining entry, breaching and then penetrating, stretching the ring of muscle as Maurice had never felt stretched before. The feeling was extraordinary: challenging and sore, but more intimate than anything Maurice had dreamed of, engulfing him in sensations and emotions that almost immediately overwhelmed him.

> ‘I love you,’ Alec whispered, engorged with longing, feeling Maurice’s tightness and pushing into him, then feeling him ease, gradually letting more of him in. Then – carefully, starting slow – he began to fuck his lover for real.
> 
> ‘It seems … rather strange,’ Maurice whispered, starting to move against Alec a little from below, experimenting, finding the unaccustomed rhythm of rough, vulnerable pleasure.
> 
> ‘I know,’ Alec whispered back. ‘You’re doing fine.’

**_Chapter 2 ends_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Chapter 2 summary draws on Forster’s own words in a letter he wrote to Christopher Isherwood (who had been a friend of Morgan’s since the 1930s, and oversaw the eventual publication of _Maurice_ after his death) in 1952 on his completion of the short, additional chapter [Chapter 44] in which Maurice and Alec spend the night together at ‘a strange hotel, a casual refuge’: a ‘passionate, distracted’ night that ends in what both believe to be their final parting, since Alec is due to emigrate to Argentina, sailing from Southampton, on Saturday 29th:
> 
> ‘I have drafted out the chapter, and would like to show it to you, together with the chapters before and after … I’m afraid it isn’t right in itself, and couldn’t be after so many years, but my wanting to do it is important ... As it is, A. has full license to misbehave, and throw his attractive weight about, and M. to be grand, and I should like to think that they take it.’ (E. M. Forster, letter to Christopher Isherwood, 18 January 1952. Quoted by Philip Gardner, Editor’s Introduction to the Abinger Edition of _Maurice_ , 1999, p.xli)
> 
> As in his writing of Maurice and Alec’s first night together in the Russet Room at Penge (Pendersleigh in the film), Forster takes a discreet fade-out / ellipsis approach to whatever happened between them, sexually and emotionally, that night at the hotel. Chapter 44 (certainly as it was published) offers few cues/clues beyond some cryptic phrases a casual reader may barely notice (‘tenderness and toughness mixed’). But even more difficult to imagine, and write, than the sex are the emotional extremes Maurice and Alec must have experienced during that night. 
> 
> I started writing _Strange Hotel_ because I was fascinated by that challenge – but, after months of endless ‘wrong’ drafts, I now appreciate exactly why Forster got it over with quickly and settled for quick-fix sketchiness. And the result of all this writerly dithering and angst is that my Chapter 2 isn’t far short of PWP. But how could it not be? Forster might have left the can’t-keep-their-hands-off-each-other sex tacit, but it’s surely canon...


	3. Lamplight: Toughness and Tenderness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Tell me,’ Maurice whispered. ‘Tell me.’ Sweet release.

> ‘Alec —’

High above Bloomsbury, a faded pink curtain billowed in front of a gaping sash, sucking and swelling on the night air. Beyond and below, London, and rain – a deserted mews where black cobbles glistened under a dirty streetlight. Somewhere nearby, the leaves of a lone tree rustled.

Inside the curtain, protected from the city and society, two men were utterly lost to all this – lost deep in each other in a different natural communion of hearts and bodies and sweat-glazed skin. For the first time in his life, Alec was oblivious to the presence of trees. It was a demanding art, giving and taking such serious pleasure with a gentleman. More testing still for Maurice as the inexperienced receiver – but, to Alec’s great delight, his lover’s thrilling body was matched by a boxer’s stamina. They were so attuned to each other now, so very aroused, that even Alec’s awkwardest thrusts were rewarded by the deepest, sweetest, ungentlemanly moans. Flesh alive to every sensation and blood pounding, they moved together as one in an unsteady, maddening rhythm of pleasure that made the tiny bed shudder and lurch.

They had rested and shifted a couple of times, and just now Maurice’s elegant legs had relaxed around his lover – unlike his hands, which gripped Alec so hard that his shoulders and flanks were patterned with red marks. The feeling was strange: being cradled and clawed like this from below; athletic thighs splayed and flexing for Alec’s pleasure; an uncalloused heel unexpectedly caressing just below his buttocks, then pressing wantonly into his crack, inflaming him more intimately.

_You’re a strange one_ , Alec thought, not for the first time this past hour. He’d come here to have it _his_ way with a novice; to teach his beautiful, stuck-up, contrary gentleman a right lesson. Even now, a stubborn streak in Alec couldn’t quite drop his fury at what he still felt as casual arrogance, not fear: Maurice thinking he could ‘deal’ with Alec by ignoring his letters; his failures to come to the boathouse for the sex Alec had _ordered._ Instead, here was Maurice anchoring _him_ , steadying Alec’s trembling thrusts. Even as Maurice seemed to submit to his lover utterly – his beautiful throat arched back and uttered broken moans; hot breath whispered that Alec was an angel and gasped his name over and over, as if the repetition alone could bring release – his friction gripped and played with Alec’s swollen cock almost as _he_ pleased. Almost as if the exquisite pleasures and pleasure-giving of buggery were second nature rather than Maurice’s first time.

Stranger still, even as he filled Maurice, Alec was weakening for him. Beneath his act of mastery, the truth was that Maurice’s capitulation had moved him deeply – far more deeply than Alec dared to let on. On each outward pull, his arse arched up to seek his lover’s touch, craving something more; aching for a deeper reciprocation that could not (or certainly not at this moment) be forthcoming. Even the inward squeeze of Maurice’s thighs on his glutes, rubbing together the globes of his buttocks, felt obscenely arousing. And then an errant foot ventured lower, innocently exploring the mysterious, highly sensitive, terrain between Alec’s pouting hole and the weight of his balls.

Caught right off-guard, Alec cursed, juddered, almost lost balance. Gasping at the erotic ambush, he plunged roughly into Maurice, his whole body shaking violently, so that Maurice – reeling himself – had to steady him again.

> ‘Sweet _Alec_ — _ohhh_ —’

Arms and thighs, body and soul, Maurice pulled Alec close, stabilised him as best he could, and locked him there, holding him deep inside. For a dozen or so breaths they lay fused like that, wide open to each other in throbbing stillness: shaking, shaken, and utterly vulnerable; both now intensely conscious how close they must be to orgasm. Maurice felt his lower body rocking and grinding again of its own accord – gently, then not. Anything to preserve this moment a little longer; doing everything to draw out every sensation of Alec stirring inside him; his veined thickness and the hard ridge of his corona catching and rubbing where Maurice _needed_ it, sending Alec into primitive answering growls. Both longed to stay joined, but time was slipping away from them like sand.

> ‘Alec — darling — _please_ —’

Something in Maurice’s voice caught Alec’s attention. With as much care as he could muster, he halted his slippery thrusts, breath heaving.

> _He don’t know how … that he needs … no, **I** need to … Of **course** he don’t. _

Alec felt a sudden stab of guilt.

> _Selfish prick, you are. Couldn’t treat him worse if you tried._
> 
> ‘Maurice —’

Contrite and suddenly unconfident, Alec gently – questioningly – pressed his fingers to Maurice’s cheek, then stroked downwards to caress his gasping throat. Brushed fronds of damp hair away from the widened, darkened eyes, and tried to focus enough to gaze into them. They were both panting hard; the eyes that searched each other were feverish and dazed.

> ‘Touch me, damn you.’

The words came out harsh. It was an order – and, after testing his lover’s limits as he had for the past hour, Alec couldn’t blame him. Taking proper care of Maurice now – bringing him off to the fullest, most explosive, satisfaction – was the least he could do. Not that Maurice was far off that anyway, by the delightful look – and the throbbing, flesh-and-blood feel – of things: things that Alec allowed himself a moment to appreciate intently. But manoeuvring on the tiny bed while they were coupled like this wasn’t easy; nor was thrusting without the support of both arms…

> ‘’Ere … can you…’ Still panting indecorously, Alec endeavoured to shunt his hips sideways, towards the edge of the bed, careful not to pull out: ‘…move round with me. Careful – slow now – _good_.’
> 
> ‘Why?’

A further shuffle, and Alec was able to reposition, anchoring one foot on the narrow strip of floor, his other knee stable on the bed, Maurice’s limbs wrapped wherever they would fit, the rest of them still intimately fused.

> ‘Alec — darling — let me —’

Taking Alec’s upper body weight on both his hands, Maurice levered his lover upwards and held him there so that there was space between them. Provokingly, space to touch, to explore – and to look.

> ‘Christ,’ Alec muttered, his chest – and much else – tightening and leaping at the sight.

Their lovemaking had made both of them hot and flushed – but Maurice, especially, displayed a sensuality beyond self-consciousness or shame that shocked even Alec in its contrast with his lover’s so-recent inexperience and armour of social class when clothed. His beautiful lips parted, hair so sweetly dishevelled, his taut body glimmered with sweat that seemed to sculpt every contour, every muscle, into even more exquisite relief. His nipples stood hard even without Alec’s attention; and one pulsing surface vein traced lower, past Maurice’s hipbone and the mound of hair … and here, Alec cursed again and gulped for air, dizzy with desire, as he stared at what had long been standing between them. It was clear Maurice had more than recovered from the near-inevitable initial effects of Alec’s onslaught: his beautiful cock stood monumental, dark and fully engorged, coshing and brushing Alec’s belly, flaunting an excitement that would broach no further delay.

Lest there be any doubt, Alec could feel Maurice’s eyes staring hard into him – and one of Maurice’s hands slipped away from supporting him, downwards, as if to touch himself.

> _If you don’t, I damn well will. And make you watch._
> 
> ‘Oi! ’

Alec was having none of this, and his hand flew south instantly too, battling with Maurice’s to fulfil its urgent duty. Maurice did not surrender immediately. His beautiful mouth curved into a little smirk (it seemed to Alec) as his fist closed around the prize – and he performed a few, wilfully provoking, strokes before entrusting his formidable erection to the full care and attentions of its cause.

Two pairs of hips rolled back into motion as they resumed fucking. Despite a deceptively unhurried rhythm, almost immediately they were both gasping again and right on the edge. With Alec’s thrusts now braced by his foot on the floor, Maurice could hold his lover aloft with just one arm. Freed, his other hand roamed all over Alec’s body in a frenzy of caresses. Revelling in Alec’s warmth, overcome by his naked beauty, he excited Alec as he had when they’d first locked the door – but this time unhindered and to the brink. Alec seemed to swell even thicker and deeper inside him, filling him with feelings that were more than physical. Alec’s curses and moans were no longer words.

Alec’s hand was on him, expertly working him, driving him wild as he attended to his urgent need. Rough fingers scraping, then unexpectedly gentle, on the soft skin of his prick; then a stronger grip on his shaft: pumping and squeezing loud pleasure from him; wanking him properly now. Then the tenderest sweet torture: his breath slowing momentarily in concentration, his touch lighter than a feather, Alec traced and teased the tip of just one finger in little circles around his lover’s corona to the still more sensitive underside. The sounds coming from Maurice subsided to whimpers; the swollen head of his cock, already slick with excitement, was now leaking more urgently.

> ‘ _Maurice_ – _Christ_ – what you do to me – such thoughts –’

Maurice could well have said the same, had he not almost lost the power of speech. In his hyper-aroused state, the sensations Alec was able to conjure by barely touching him were operatically intense.

> ‘Tell me,’ Maurice whispered. He knew he’d surely erupt at any moment: just a few more strokes of Alec churning inside him, a further calculated brush of the teasing finger, until this delirious ordeal finally burst. ‘ _Tell me_ —’

Maurice’s already-flushed face blushed adorably deeper. His quickening excitement was thrillingly palpable. Alec’s breath hitched again in delight.

> ‘So … beautiful … _want you_ … everywhere … in my mouth – in me – everywhere…’: broken words stuttered out as Alec bucked wildly, fucking Maurice faster.

His own mouth instantly flooded wet from the same vivid memory, Maurice pulled Alec’s hand away from its task and sucked lewdly – loudly – on fingers that were musky with his own excitement, his tongue snaking hard between them. Deliberately, he let his saliva run all over Alec’s hand, then guided it back down again, sopping and slippery, to his desperate, twitching cock.

> ‘I can still taste you in mine’, Maurice whispered.

Everything exploded. Maurice felt his balls tensing, then – this time, thank God – emptying, over and over, his whole being convulsed in spasms of acute pleasure and no small relief. Alec swore in shock, then ecstasy, as his lover’s sphincter and deeper muscles clenched uncontrollably around him, bringing him to his own equally thunderous orgasm.

*********

**TO BE CONTINUED**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘...the sleep and the wakefulness, the toughness and tenderness mixed.’ – E. M. Forster, _Maurice_ (1971), Chapter 44


End file.
